Mr Leonard Ariff bin Abdul Shatar forayed into the pharmaceutical industry of Malaysia in late 90s and since then he gained wide experience and credibility in the country. In 2008, Mr Shatar was appointed as the director of pharmaceutical division of Chemical Company of Malaysia (CCM) and also as chief executive officer of CCM Duopharma Biotech. In 2010, he took charge of Malaysian Organisation of Pharmaceutical Industries (MOPI) as president.

In this role, Mr Shatar helped MOPI emerge as a prominent regulator and policy maker. He has been ensuring that issues such as patents and regulatory barriers are discussed on a much wider platform and MOPI is able to provide valuable input on matters that have an impact on its members.

Mr Shatar believes that his role as director of CCM's pharmaceutical division is driven by delivering acceptable returns to stakeholders of the organization balanced against needs of being a responsible corporate citizen. However, role as president of MOPI is much more holistic. He believes that looking at the Industry in its totality and charting its future growth involves regular interaction with decision makers within the Malaysian Ministry of Health and other relevant policymaking stakeholders.

During his interview with BioSpectrum Asia, Mr Shatar throws light on the evolving phase of Malaysia biopharmaceutical industry and how the industry has pushed itself to global standards amid all the policy barriers. Following are the excerpts:

Recently, Malaysia Ministry of Health raised concerns over adulterated drugs circulating in Malaysia. Is there any role or action that MOPI is taking along with the government to handle the situation? Issues on adulterated drugs primarily affect the innovator pharmaceutical companies. The Malaysian generic pharmaceutical industry tends to be less susceptible to this due to the lower prices that generics command relative to that of innovators.

MOPI has and will continue in its support of the regulatory agencies to combat any form of unlawful adulterated medicines. The new pharmacy bill intends to increase the penalty on counterfeit medicines as an added deterrent. Counterfeits tend to be in the more popular "over the counter" (OTC) medicines. MOPI estimates that the level of counterfeiting in Malaysia to be less than 2 percent of the total market.